I don't love this guy much and while I disagree all of his prescriptions for anything he does have one valid point. The middle class in the US is dying. Remember when one could put their money in a local bank and they would pay us 5% interest without fees, without minimums? Now banks TAKE as much from us while we park our money with them! That is one example of the difference between years past and now. No one can save anything. One may argue with the exact number but when most people in the US are living from paycheck to paycheck we as a country have a big problem. Republicans are not speaking TO these people. They just speak about debt, freedom, smaller government, etc. I get it. I agree with the concepts. But most Joes want to hear what we can do for them! We ALL know the Clintons will frame the debate so average people who don't spend much time thinking about political philosophy will understand. They will frame it in a way to tug at people's emotions. That is why she will win. Of course, they have a complicit media. And they are world class liars. And they repeatedly commit fraud, cover ups, and take no responsibility for screw ups. And the media lets them get away with it because they are liberal or want to hop on the money and power train.

So IMHO Reich is a crazy communist liberal. Yet his points about the sinking middle class is DEAD ON. So what say we? Less government, more tax breaks, less regulation. OK fine. So how does that help or connect with the average Joe who doesn't know the difference between the AHA and Obamacare? My answer it doesn't. And that is why folks we lose.

*****Robert Reich: The triumph of the rightBy Robert B. Reich, Tribune Content Agency

Posted October 23, 2013 at midnight

Conservative Republicans have lost their fight over the shutdown and debt ceiling, and they probably won’t get major spending cuts in upcoming negotiations over the budget.

But they’re winning the big one: How the nation understands our biggest domestic problem. Conservative Republicans say the biggest problem is the size of government and the budget deficit.

In fact, our biggest problem is the decline of the middle class and the increasing ranks of the poor, while almost all the economic gains go to the top.

The Labor Department reported Tuesday that only 148,000 jobs were created in September — way down from the average of 207,000 new jobs a month in the first quarter of the year.

Search our databases.

Many Americans have stopped looking for work. The official unemployment rate of 7.2 percent reflects only those who are still looking. If the same percentage of Americans were in the workforce today as when Barack Obama took office, today’s unemployment rate would be 10.8 percent.

Meanwhile, 95 percent of the economic gains since the recovery began in 2009 have gone to the top 1 percent. The real median household income continues to drop, and the number of Americans in poverty continues to rise.

So what’s Washington doing about this? Nothing. Instead, it’s back to debating how to cut the federal budget deficit.

But the deficit shouldn’t even be an issue because it’s now almost down to the same share of the economy as it has averaged over the last 30 years.

The triumph of right-wing Republicanism extends further. Failure to reach a budget agreement will restart the so-called “sequester” — automatic, across-the-board spending cuts that were passed in 2011 as a result of Congress’s last failure to agree on a budget.

These automatic cuts get tighter and tighter, year by year — squeezing almost everything the federal government does except for Social Security and Medicare. While about half the cuts come out of the defense budget, much of the rest come out of programs designed to help Americans in need: extended unemployment benefits; supplemental nutrition for women, infants and children; educational funding for schools in poor communities; Head Start; special education for students with learning disabilities; child-care subsidies for working families; heating assistance for poor families. The list goes on.

The biggest debate in Washington over the next few months will be whether to whack the federal budget deficit by cutting future entitlement spending and closing some tax loopholes, or go back to the sequester. Some choice.

The real triumph of the right has come in shaping the national conversation around the size of government and the budget deficit — thereby diverting attention from what’s really going on: the increasing concentration of the nation’s income and wealth at the very top, while most Americans fall further and further behind.

More cuts in the deficit will only worsen this by reducing total demand for goods and services and by eliminating programs that hard-pressed Americans depend on.

The president and Democrats should reframe the national conversation around widening inequality.

They could start by demanding an increase in the minimum wage and a larger Earned Income Tax Credit. (The president doesn’t even have to wait for Congress to act. He can raise the minimum wage for government contractors through an executive order.)

Framing the central issue around jobs and inequality would make clear why it’s necessary to raise taxes on the wealthy and close tax loopholes (such as “carried interest,” which enables hedge-fund and private-equity managers to treat their taxable income as capital gains). It would explain why we need to invest more in education — including early-childhood as well as affordable higher education.

This framework would even make the Affordable Care Act more understandable — as a means for helping working families whose jobs are paying less or disappearing altogether, and therefore are in constant danger of losing health insurance.

The central issue of our time is the reality of widening inequality of income and wealth. Everything else — the government shutdown, the fight over the debt ceiling, the continuing negotiations over the budget deficit — is a dangerous distraction.

The right’s success in generating this distraction is its greatest, and most insidious, triumph.

Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor, is a columnist for the Tribune Content Agency.*****

1) Go after "The War on Savers" i.e. artificially low interest rates. The WOS is a liberal fascist subsidy to the Big Banks and Wall Street paid for by the savers of America.

2) Make interest income on savings tax free.

Separately, the post about Sen. McCain sending up a trial balloon about running again got me thinking about the theme I have been raising here for a few years now-- the paradigm shift in foreign affairs.

The GOP is associated with a muscular foreign policy-- in the Bi-Polar World against the Russian Empire and in the Uni-Polar Moment with Afpakia and Iraq. The former no longer exists, and with regard to the latter, the American people, not without considerable reason, have come to doubt the competence of our government to lead or even navigate present day waters.

It occurs to me to say the following:

1) Wave the flag proudly for the exceptional role that America played in the world from the rise of Hitler to the fall of the Soviet Empire2) Acknowledge that Bush made major errors in Afpakia and Iraq. In Afpakia, he started well, but took his eye off the ball due to Iraq. We should have continued to pay attention or left. In Iraq, the major flaw was to go in far too light to establish a new order and for this Rumbo deserves the lion share of the blame-- and Bush for taking his advice. However, some the Dems get huge blame for not just disagreeing in patriotic fashion, but in sabotaging our efforts. Ultimately Bush got it right with the Surge and handed off a win to Baraq. In my strong opinion, we need to hammer the point that Baraq threw away a win and that from this major historical error flows the subsequent disastrous trajectory.3) That said, it is too late now to undo and we must look forward from here. In the new Multi-Polar World, the US's over arcing strategic concept is , , , what?

3) That said, it is too late now to undo and we must look forward from here. In the new Multi-Polar World, the US's over arcing strategic concept is , , , what?

This discussion is purely academic as long as Obama remains in the White House. He believes the United States is a bully, responsible for most of the ills of the world, and needs to be cut down to size. Obama is no different in this regard from other radical leftists. He is accomplishing this goal quite effectively in my estimation. I think it's all quite deliberate - note well his active support of the Muslim Brotherhood. Until this man leaves office - and frankly, I have serious doubts at this point that he has any intention of doing so - the U.S. government will continue to be perceived by its enemies as a "paper tiger," its threats nothing but empty talk and no action. Obama has accomplished his objective.

« Last Edit: October 23, 2013, 05:02:14 PM by objectivist1 »

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"You have enemies? Good. That means that you have stood up for something, sometime in your life." - Winston Churchill.

I disagree that this is academic. Indeed IMHO it is a key variable in the essential task of WINNING back the White House. Do we really want 8 years of Hillary?!? If not we had better address this issue. Romney's tin ear on this, e.g. with regard to Afpakia cost him as did McCain's attitude as well.

Quite correctly voters will want to know what is our vision for the Middle East? Iran? China/the South China Sea? etc.

For decades a strong military and strong foreign policy was a bulwark of Republican votes-- now it is not.

It still is a bulwark of CONSERVATIVE votes. The Republican Party leadership, however - is at war with its base. The few exceptions - Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Louie Goehmert, et. al. are the way forward. The old dead, rotting wood - McCain, McConnell, Boehner - and the younger appeasers - Ryan, Cantor, Woodall, and many others - must be defeated and removed from office. The current Republican Party is doomed with its present "leadership" of eunuchs.

If this nation would simply adopt Reagan's posture of "peace through strength, trust but verify," as we would with a proper Constitutionally Conservative leader - our standing on the world stage would be restored. This isn't going to happen from within the Federal Government. The plan Mark Levin outlines in his book "The Liberty Amendments" I believe - is the only way to stop this nation's accelerating decay, short of civil war. Those are the cold, hard facts. The federal government is now unmoored from the Constitution. We have a completely lawless President. We have an impotent Congress willing to capitulate to his every thuggish demand, and a media which might as well be literally state-controlled. They're relentlessly promoting the leftist agenda and protecting this President voluntarily. I repeat - Congress is now impotent. If the STATE LEGISLATURES don't force a return to Constitutionally-limited government, we are doomed. I see no other solution, as I say - short of an armed patriot resistance against a tyrannical federal government. That would be a most unfortunate development, but quite possibly necessary if the Founders' vision is to be preserved.

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"You have enemies? Good. That means that you have stood up for something, sometime in your life." - Winston Churchill.

Ummm , , , the world is not bi-polar or uni-polar anymore, and with good reason the American people doubt the competence of their government to execute foreign policy, be it Bush or Obama. Cruz, Rand Paul, and others are a major force within the Rep Party.

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Columnist Jonah Goldberg: "In the recent internecine conservative donnybrook over the government shutdown, the insurgents insisted they were in an ideological struggle with the establishment. But there was precious little ideology involved. Instead, it was a fight over tactics and power. The Republican Party almost unanimously opposed Obamacare, and the Republicans who've been in office far longer than Cruz & Co. have voted more than three dozen times to get rid of the disastrous program. And yet, the latecomers to the battle talk as if the veterans in the trenches were collaborators the whole time. ... But the real source of that frustration is not the insufficient conservatism of the establishment; it's the insufficient power and popularity of conservatism coupled with the very real failures of the GOP to reverse conservatism's fortunes over the last two decades."

"it's the insufficient power and popularity of conservatism coupled with the very real failures of the GOP to reverse conservatism's fortunes over the last two decades."

I think this is in line with what I am talking about. How can we reverse conservative's fortunes if we are not listening and responding to the real concerns of so many?

"the insurgents insisted they were in an ideological struggle with the establishment. But there was precious little ideology involved. Instead, it was a fight over tactics and power"

Well yes. A guerilla resistance war vs. a full scale retreat with management of decline.

We keep debating in circles. It all comes down to how do we convince people that government is not the answer to all the world's ills. Indeed it will mostly make things worse.Half the US gets a check from the other half. How do we combat that? I hear a lot of ideas on the board. But they speak only to the 50% who are working and shelling out the dough.

Does Jonah offer any ideas to reverse the decline? Jonah is suggesting both ways are flawed.

It just might take a giant crash of the pyramid of cards the left has shoved down our throats.

BTW if I read one more lefty state how Reagan was willing to compromise while in the same breath point out he ballooned the debt - why he did that because of the Democrats in the Houses!

Dealing with the horrific effects of leftist policies is the only thing that will wake some up.

Yes, but even then the answer in this mindset is double down on failure.

CCP has posed a difficult question, once we have more than half the people on the taking/riding side of the equation, how do we win elections. As Rush put it after the last election, how do you beat Santa Claus if he can offer you free everything.

Romney was half right and half wrong about the 47%. 41% today (RCP poll average) look at abject failure and say good job. Half of Americans rely on some government benefit or subsidy, but they aren't all the same people as the core liberal vote. Plenty of liberal voters are rich and in high tax brackets, Plenty of swing voters are professionals living in nice neighborhoods, working and paying in. Plenty of people who take a check from the government vote conservative and plenty more are swing voters. The sell has gotten harder but it isn't as mathematically impossible as the premise suggests. As always, you have to win on the margin.

CCP argues we need more than platitudes. Some of it in the eye of the beholder. When I hear empty platitudes like economic freedom it brings a tear to my eye for all the people denied theirs and those who died fighting for it. I also connect it in thought with the things like the Heritage index that show economic freedom synonymous with prosperity, also with peace and a clean environment.

The message will soon come down to who more than than how. Bad candidates or undisciplined ones cost us the Senate, and arguably the Presidency. A Margaret Thatcher for example can bring what you see as platitudes to life with real meaning. Finding the next Reagan is another platitude but good people are stepping forward.

Messaging needs to be both offense and defense, not necessarily from the same messenger. Someone noteworthy needs to be in immediate response mode (remember the Clinton war room) calling out this administration and other liberals on their BS and drivel as fast as it comes out. Then true leadership needs to be on offense, relentlessly pushing what could, would and should be the agenda to address our challenges.

Most of all, as we say in tennis, we need to cut back on our unforced errors!

I am not trying to beat a dead horse. By the way, Rush, has been marvelous since the last election. There is just no one like him. For me he is top radio dog! Crafty is top board dog.

I wonder like GM if we need a crash for those who vehemently defend their "entitlements" to wake up.

Most people are employees not employers. So they are kind of followers not leaders. So offer them free stuff and they will "kill" for it. This is not a racial thing. It is a economic class thing. We see these people all over the message boards, on cable, in our daily endeavors. They despise Republicans. They feel they are entitled. They can't earn it for whatever reasons. So dammit life is not fair and we need government to give us our due.

Reagan brought in many blue collar types. I think because he brought back the spirit of pride in AMerica. TOday the demographics are different. I am not sure why but ASians Latinos and Blacks do not seem to aprreciate American traditional values. Perhaps because they come from different countries that have different types of values. It certainly does not help when children come here and our schools no longer teach them to think of America with pride. That may be a big part of it. You know this identity politics thing.

We need to combat that I think. We are ALL AMERICANS. We are not women. We are not men. We are not Latino. We are not white, black, Asian etc. WE are all in this country and are together. Do you want us to be the best or keep tearing ourselves apart?

These are most of the core of other issues.

But back to the economic side;

As Reich, and has others, are correct in pointing out : Without a thriving middle class we are all either the very few rich or the very many struggling poor. And that is a big problem. Repubs need to connect more than with as Doug nicely describes "platitudes".

Guys - please read my previous post once again. Neither Crafty nor anyone else is addressing what I state there. You folks are acting as though the solution to our problems is to work within the current establishment party leadership, against an immovable leviathan of leftist media. I repeat - the Federal Government is BROKEN, Congress is currently IMPOTENT, and any solution to these problems must come from the STATE legislatures. We're in a post-constitutional era as far as the Federal Government is concerned. They are lawless. This navel-gazing about how things SHOULD be IF the system worked is not getting us anywhere.

That is the sense in which I mean the discussion is academic at this point. Until the root cause is addressed, nothing else is going to work long-term.

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"You have enemies? Good. That means that you have stood up for something, sometime in your life." - Winston Churchill.

The crash is coming. Stein's law can't be avoided. Be politically active, but understand that not much can be done until the crash. We are all in for the Cloward-Piven log ride and it's going to suck like nothing in recent history. Guns, ammo, food, training and some gold and silver are the best focus for your energies now. If possible, get far away from urban areas as you possibly can.

My sentiments exactly. I couldn't agree more strongly. I'm well aware that many if not most Americans (who are not and never do pay attention) think that this line of thinking is crazy. All of my best friend's father's Jewish friends and family told him he was a crazy, chicken little, alarmist nut-job when he warned them to get out of Austria in 1938 and moved here to the U.S. Most of those people died in the death camps. We are at an analogous point in history right now in this country. Ignore it at your own peril.

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"You have enemies? Good. That means that you have stood up for something, sometime in your life." - Winston Churchill.

Denial is very comforting. Humans are capable of immense self delusion. Hey, it's just train ride to temporary housing. The sign out front says work will make us free. Papa won medals fighting for Germany in the great war, Germany would never betray us.

Similar words have been spoken in different languages. Khmer, Ukrainian, Mandarin,to cite a few.

I agree with much of it and I like Mark Levin, but you lost me on this point:

"The plan Mark Levin outlines in his book "The Liberty Amendments" I believe - is the only way to stop this nation's accelerating decay"

Right now we can't get 50% to agree with us, so instead we will get 75% to agree with us and pass amendments wiser, stricter, and smarter than what the founders could write and shrink government to something far smaller and less intrusive than what voters support now. How?

It has to be a grass-roots effort. No, it won't be easy, and it is far from certain it will succeed, or how long it may take. Indeed - even Levin himself concedes that it is POSSIBLE that we may be past the point at which this plan can be implemented before collapse/catastrophe occurs. I acknowledge that as well. But what is the alternative you would suggest?

Remember that only about one-third of the colonists supported the American Revolution. To say the leaders of that movement faced daunting odds is a huge understatement - even today, many would say their success was nothing short of miraculous. We may be destined for severe trials, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. I'm open to alternative suggestions - I just haven't seen any that I think are as good or better than Levin's. One thing is certain - I'm NOT going to curl up in the fetal position and accept defeat.

« Last Edit: October 25, 2013, 12:53:24 PM by objectivist1 »

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"You have enemies? Good. That means that you have stood up for something, sometime in your life." - Winston Churchill.

The various expressions of the fundamental vision disagreement that now afflict our country such asa) guns and self-defense vs. the sheepleb) the nanny state vs. freedomc) gay marriage, gay parentingd) pre-birth life life vs. abortione) free minds and free markets vs liberal fascismf) etc.

Thanks for that. Before you posted 'engage in the culture wars', my thinking was to mostly put 'social issues' that divide us aside and at least electorally build a majority that can agree on economic issues. Maybe I am wrong on that.

This year we stopped new gun control efforts without putting it front and center in elections. Of course not without a fight.

On abortion, I believe in the slow fight of changing hearts and changing minds ahead of forcing view on others with new laws the way liberals do with their causes. Without majority support in 38 states, this doesn't get resolved either way in the constitution.

The gay marriage issue is lost from a conservative point of view, and not worth putting on the front burner. The gay parenting issue is odd - with gayness being the opposite of the instinct to form families. The breakdown of marriage and family is now a miserable, overwhelming fact in this country. How we move forward on that I have no idea. That loss is closely tied to the rest of our problems.

Foreign Policy is going to divide us in the next Presidential season. Many conservatives are becoming screw the rest of the world isolationists while others like Marco Rubio sound very Reaganesque (and like Obj) in terms of peace through strength. Peace through Strength is right, but people have become very skeptical about interventions.

The happy warrior point, made earlier, is crucial. There is a lot of negativity on our side, anger, despair, etc., deservedly. But we need to put on a face that is persuasive with optimism and a positive plan. We need to focus on moving the needle ever so slightly with everyone we come in contact with. This isn't about narrowing our allies down to a smaller group that agree perfectly with us. It is about making our viewpoint more appealing to those in the middle, and bringing people in. We need far greater participation from within our own core groups and we need to chip away at liberal, Democratic loyalty from their core constituencies. Most of the latter has gone uncontested and that is a big part of our failure.

Strategies and tactics matter. We are getting KILLED in the ground game, far short of where we need to be in the money game, completely lost in the major media game, getting our asses kicked in messaging, etc., - yet we are still winning roughly half of elections and losing big ones by only a handful of percentage points.

Obj: "One thing is certain - I'm NOT going to curl up in the fetal position and accept defeat."

An undercurrent of bigotry? He misses the point. As does the guy in the following article. My friend and colleague who I noted in another post who is Indian understands. He said in one generation his people have come here and worked hard. They were not welcomed with open loving, adoring arms. Yet look at them achieve and achieve and achieve. They are the American Dream. How many other countries can groups move into and accomplish so much. Does anyone think there are many Latino countries or African countries or Middle or Far Eastern countries where an outside group with different culture and appearance could come in and accomplish so much?

I might have posted this already but post again to sync with BD's post on Tea Party thread. We don't need people to make blatant racist hatred comments. That said there is hate on all sides of the aisle to go around. This guy to me is a coward. He surely does not really believe in Conservative values if he quits the party over this. And what do Mexicans expect. They come here illegally by the millions walking or driving over the boarder, set up shop, and go to our schools, pay no income taxes, property taxes, in some cases even get other benefits, use our ER services, turn around and accuse us of being racist white bigots and then expect us to respond with a hearty welcome? But it is not just about Mexicans. There are millions of others from other countries coming here as well.

That said I do feel terrible reading the stories of narco-terror in the countries south of the border. And much of those drugs come here and the drug user dirtballs here are feeding the money to the murderous bastards there.

"The name of American, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations." --George Washington

"Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives." --John Adams

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." --Thomas Jefferson

"Posterity: you will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it." --John Quincy Adams

"National honor is national property of the highest value." --James Monroe"Americanism means the virtues of courage, honor, justice, truth, sincerity, and hardihood -- the virtues that made America. ... We can have no 50-50 allegiances in this country. Either a man is an American and nothing else, or he is not an American at all." --Teddy Roosevelt

"We identify the flag with almost everything we hold dear on earth, peace, security, liberty, our family, our friends, our home. But when we look at our flag and behold it emblazoned with all our rights we must remember that it is equally a symbol of our duties. Every glory that we associate with it is the result of duty done." --Calvin Coolidge

"He serves his party best who serves the country best." --Rutherford Hayes"America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand." --Harry Truman

"There is nothing wrong with America that the faith, love of freedom, intelligence and energy of her citizens cannot cure." --Dwight Eisenhower"And so, my fellow Americans: Ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country." --John F. Kennedy

In the words of Thomas Paine: 'These are times that try men's souls.' We need more than summer soldiers and sunshine patriots. ... We must draw anew on the individual strength, ingenuity, and vision that built America. But our gaze is not set on the past; it's firmly fixed on tomorrow. ... You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children (America), the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children's children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done." --Ronald Reagan

Let me bookend these quotes with another from George Washington: "No country upon earth ever had it more in its power to attain these blessings than United America. Wondrously strange, then, and much to be regretted indeed would it be, were we to neglect the means and to depart from the road which Providence has pointed us to so plainly; I cannot believe it will ever come to pass."

To that end, I am reminded of these words from John Wayne: "Sure I wave the American flag. Do you know a better flag to wave? Sure I love my country with all her faults. I'm not ashamed of that, never have been, never will be."

Fellow Patriots, let us thank God for our great nation every day. And if this day was our last, may our final words be as those of Continental Army volunteer Nathan Hale prior to being hanged by the Red Coats in 1776: "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country."

“They take us for granted. They feel like we are going to vote for them (democrats) anyway, but if there was a republican out here doing what he said he’s going to do, I would vote for him.”

“I think they are self-motivated and their interests aren’t in the community and in a lot of cases, they don’t even live in the community.”

I like this post. The support that most blacks have for Dems came mostly from people telling them how to vote and what is in their best interest (government programs). But the status quo sucks and they are vulnerable to the persuasion that could come from hearing a different view - if our message was clear, understandable and effectively presented to them. Most real persuasion happens face to face. Most tea partiers, libertarians, conservatives, do not live in 'the community' either, from the point of view of inner city blacks. That is a hard one to overcome. Escaping failed Dem rule of the cities is one reason why most conservatives already moved further out.

8. They claim that you "lack empathy for others", that you're "selfish" or "evil."

9. They accuse you of not loving ordinary people, and hating the poor, the children, the elderly, and the disabled.

10. They denounce you for not being a "true" Christian.

11. They insist that Christianity proclaims and supports socialism and communism.

12. They tell you to shut up!

13. They condemn you for judging others. They lecture you that Christians are not allowed to judge others. (Think about that judgmental accusation for a second... Ironic, isn't it?)

14. They become enraged and call you angry and hateful again when you apply their own standards of judgment to their own comments and opinions.

15. They blame you for being belligerent and hardheaded.

16. They're outraged that you continue to speak/post and stand your ground.

17. They insist they're not progressives or leftists, despite the evidence you provided to the contrary.

18. They declare themselves "moderates" and call you a "right-wing extremist."

19. They presume to know your mind and heart, and tell you what you think and why.

20. When you expose their fallacies and logically defend your arguments with more objective information, they quickly change the subject or suddenly claim that they're too busy to waste time with you.

21. They almost immediately proceed to misrepresent your actual views on an entirely new issue, attempting to distract and place you on the defensive. They assert erroneous opinions and ascribe them to you; then demand that you explain yourself.

22. When you ignore this diversionary tactic, they accuse you of being too stupid or cowardly to answer.

23. When you stay on topic, they pretend that you're the one who misunderstood what they were saying and doing. They tell that you can't debate logically.

24. They complain that they can't tolerate you any longer. (See note 6 above... Yes, the irony is lost on them!)

25. They de-friend or block you from Facebook to prevent future interactions with you. (De-friend means they are very annoyed. Block means they really despise you and fear your very presence anywhere on Facebook. They run and hide to avoid you permanently.)

These tactics indicate that many leftists and progressives are not interested in debating with those with whom they disagree. They emote instead of reason. They focus on personalities rather than principles. They don't engage the ideas. Instead, they attack, obfuscate, impugn, accuse, name-call, belittle, insult, abuse, and defame anyone who disagrees with them or challenges their beliefs.

Krauthammer is very sharp, no doubt. Great insights. But like everyone else right now he seems to have no idea what the way out of this mess is.

In the Stewart conversation he left the impression that welfare state programs were an unequivocal success. That can't be his view. No intelligent person on the right can see good from those without also seeing irreparable damage done to our society. Maybe he can explain what he meant. I think what he is saying is that a winning candidate on the right will reform these programs, not end them. Conservatives accept a safety net, just not one this large and distorted.

He explains the recent Ted Cruz v. establishment split on the right quite well. We all are want to end Obamacare, but disagree on the tactics. That is not a huge philosophical divide to bridge.

What I don't understand and didn't hear from the so-called more reasonable voices on the right, such as the WSJ editorials, CK, and Rove-type establishment figures is just how they will end Obamacare if not through de-funding. Even as it implodes, we only have the votes to de-fund, not repeal. When will we have 60 votes in the Senate, control of the White House, control of the House simultaneously to repeal as Dems did to deem it passed? This will all happen either never, or after Republicans sound like liberals, or else too late to stop an entrenched program that million hundreds(?) are counting on for their health care.

I wonder if we could ask the fund-Obamcare Republicans and the starting-to-doubt-Obamacare Democrats to at least draw the line with not funding this trainwreck one damn dime above the level of the estimates on which it was sold and deemed passed.

The only way to understand what is happening to America in our time — and for that matter, in Europe since World War II — is to understand the left.

And one way to understand the left — and its enormous appeal to many decent people — is to understand what it learned from World War II and the Nazi experience. The lessons people draw from history go a long way toward explaining how they view the world and how they behave.

Unfortunately, virtually everything the left learned from the unique evil known as Nazism has been wrong.

The first lesson was that the right is evil, not merely wrong. Because Nazism has been successfully labelled “right-wing,” virtually every right-wing position and leader has been either cynically or sincerely characterized by the left as a danger to civilization. That is why the right is so often labelled fascist and compared to Nazis. Vast numbers of people in the West truly believe that if the right prevails, fascism will follow.

Of course, Nazism was not right-wing — certainly not in American terms. How could it be? Right-wing means less government, not more. Nor was it left-wing, even though “Nazism” was an abbreviation for National Socialism.

Nazism was sui generis. It was radical racism combined with totalitarianism; and racism as a doctrine is neither right nor left.

We have no contemporary movement of any major significance that is Nazi-like. The closest thing we have is Islamist hatred of non-Muslims — but even that is mostly religion- rather than race-based.

The association of Nazism with right-wing is one reason many Jews loathe the right. In the Jewish psyche, to fight the right is to fight incipient Nazism.

The second lesson the left learned is directly related to the first. If the right is so evil that, if allowed to prevail, Nazism will follow, then surely the left must be beautiful and noble. And that, of course, is how the left sees itself — as inherently beautiful and noble. After all, how can the opposite of Nazism be anything but noble?

The third erroneous lesson is a deep fear and loathing of nationalism. Since the Nazis committed their crimes in the name of nationalism (race-based nationalism, to be precise), nationalism must be curbed. That explains much of the left’s contempt for Americans who wave the flag — indeed, the left has rendered the term “flag-wavers” a pejorative term.

How else to explain the fact that on American national holidays one finds so many more flags displayed in conservative areas than in liberal ones? The trauma of World War I had already killed nationalism in much of Europe. And World War II did that for the left in America.

The left regards any assertion of American national identity — not merely flag-waving — as chauvinism bordering on fascism. When the left charges Americans who fear the dilution of American national identity that could follow citizenship for tens of millions of illegal immigrants with “xenophobia,” and “racism,” it is not only a cynical attempt to cultivate Latino votes for the Democratic Party. It is also a sincere belief that conservative concerns about American national identity are reminiscent of chauvinist bigotry.

The most obvious example of left-wing opposition to American nationalism is its cultivation of “multiculturalism” as a replacement for American national identity. For the left, American citizens are no longer Americans first and foremost; we are African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Hispanic- or Latino-Americans, Native-Americans, etc. The left celebrates what precedes the hyphen far more than the “American” that follows it. As a result, America no longer instills traditional American values and an American identity on either those born here or in its immigrants, which is the reason for the right’s concern over illegal immigration, not bigotry and xenophobia.

A fourth lesson the left learned from Nazism has been that no judging of cultures is permissible. Because the Nazis deemed Jews and others as inferior, we are no longer allowed to judge other cultures. In the post-World War II world of the left, all cultures are equal. To say that the contemporary Islamic world, or that black inner city culture, has serious moral problems that these cultures need to address is to be labelled dangerously racist — again reminiscent, for the left, of the Nazis who declared other groups (inherently) defective. For the left, the only cultures one may judge adversely are white American and religious Jewish and Christian.

Fifth and finally, the left has affirmed pacifism as an ideal. One would think that the most obvious moral and rational lesson to be learned from the Nazi experience is the need to fight evil. After all, if decent nations were not as militarily strong as they were, and were not as prepared as they were to use that might, the Nazis would not have been defeated, and many millions more “non-Aryans” would have been enslaved and murdered. But the left, including, sad to say, Germany, did not draw that lesson. Instead of learning to fight evil, the left has learned that fighting is evil — and it has taught this to two generations of Americans.

To amend Santayana’s famous dictum, it is those who learn the wrong lessons from history who are condemned to repeat it.

“Although a basic or guaranteed income would have to be financed through taxation it has been proposed by a number of classical liberals and libertarians.One of the most prominent proponents of the negative income tax, which guarantees a basic income, was Milton Friedman, the nobel-prize winning economist and free-market advocate. Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek express support for a “minimum income for everyone” in the third volume of Law, Legislation, and Liberty. The American radical Thomas Paine proposed a national income in this pamphlet Agrarian Justice, and “

"So, WV is looking at one of the worst disasters it has ever experienced. Its directly related to energy companies. It's clear they didn't inform the DEP of any leaks or contamination. Water is 9 counties or more isn't even fit to TOUCH. You can't even boil it clean. If you boil it it put the hazards in the air.

"Seriously, someone takes an AR to a school and dramatically kills 12 little kids and the national media is all over it in seconds. People immediately rally behind banning dangerous weapons. BUT if we slowly poison our children with the water they drink, see a pattern of ignoring safety and environmental concerns and destroy the land we love, no one jumps to ban anything or even put tighter restriction or regulation on HAZARDS? Something is very, very, wrong and it needs to change."

I post this cry of anger and frustration here because it is one that we should be answering and frankly our side really does not. It is something we need to rectify.

"So, WV is looking at one of the worst disasters it has ever experienced. Its directly related to energy companies. It's clear they didn't inform the DEP of any leaks or contamination. Water is 9 counties or more isn't even fit to TOUCH. You can't even boil it clean. If you boil it it put the hazards in the air.

"Seriously, someone takes an AR to a school and dramatically kills 12 little kids and the national media is all over it in seconds. People immediately rally behind banning dangerous weapons. BUT if we slowly poison our children with the water they drink, see a pattern of ignoring safety and environmental concerns and destroy the land we love, no one jumps to ban anything or even put tighter restriction or regulation on HAZARDS? Something is very, very, wrong and it needs to change."

I post this cry of anger and frustration here because it is one that we should be answering and frankly our side really does not. It is something we need to rectify.

First, terrible tragedy! Second, how is this political? "Our side" favors recklessness? "Their side" favors safety? We don't have enough environmental safety laws? Government has been hands off on energy? I don't think so.

"...see a pattern of ignoring safety and environmental concerns and destroy the land we love"

- The water quality in America has never been better in our lifetimes. Industrial safety has never been better. Distorting facts doesn't solve problems. The totalitarian governments with NO private sectors ALWAYS have worse environmental records than freer countries. What industry in America is more highly regulated than energy?

"It's clear they didn't inform the DEP of any leaks or contamination."

- That's sounds to me like a multiple felony allegation which may be true, but not a sign of an unregulated industry or a political side that doesn't care.

When you are in the middle of crisis, Fukushima or this one, it might seem reasonable to question everything and accuse everyone. I have no idea what failed here. In between crises, we as a society are constantly opposing policies that would power us more safely. For example, pipelines are safer than trucks and rail, we know that yet we block pipelines. Fracking natural gas is cleaner than coal, yet we attack fracking. Transporting gasoline is dangerous yet we have no new refineries in America since the 1970s. Nuclear is safer and cleaner than all the rest and we block it at every turn. We let investments in shiny green objects like Solyndra distract us away from real investments in real solutions. And those people who oppose all major energy sources seem to consume the most.

Clean water will be delivered into disaster areas using fossils fuels made possible by the fact that we are (still) a very prosperous, energy-based society.

In this case, the regulations and safety inspections already required should have prevented this and the company at fault should pay for the cleanup. I don't understand the implication that our side thinks people should not be responsible for their actions. Isn't it exactly the other way around.

Like a plane crash to an airline, a chemical spill to an energy company is not how you maximize profits.

This being "The Way Forward" thread, my intended point here is one about communication.

According to Jung, people operate through four modalities: thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuition. IIRC about 60% of the population has emotion as its dominant modality. If we wish to reach this 60%, we need to communicate in emotional language.

One of the conclusions I reached from my three Congressional campaigns is that most people "think backwards"-- they choose the position that expresses their emotions, then learn facts and reasons to justify them. This is why so few people change their minds when confronted with more facts and superior reasoning. Intuitively, emotional people know they do this-- and thus assume that everyone else does too. In other words they must be reached on the emotional level first.

So, as I see it, the question presented is how do we speak effectively to the emotions that this person just expressed?

First it seems to me we must say "Nail the bastards!"

Second we must make a refrain out of "The free market says that all costs to a transaction must be born by buyer and seller. When this is not the case it is a violations of the rules of the free market and a proper area for governmental action." We must make clear that our objection to "regulation" is when it is outside of this area and is simply a matter of liberal fascist nanny know-it-all do-gooders looking to impose their ideas on everyone else and that OF COURSE our heart is into punishing the nefarious who would pollute our environment, our country, our planet. Where there are such nefarious deeds, we need to be at the forefront of those calling for the proper exercise of police power.

Third, with these emotional foundations laid, then we can look at the facts and bring reason to bear and stand a chance of being heard.

"most people "think backwards"-- they choose the position that expresses their emotions, then learn facts and reasons to justify them. "

This is true. I support the search for how to address these people emotionally.

For me, the only way I know is to persuade backwards, hoping that confronting the 'facts' and the logic will find its way back to the emotions. We can react with nail the bastards before knowing the cause or the facts, but I can't let the implication go that this spill (or the financial crisis of 2008) happened because government got too small. Regulated failures happen when government gets too incompetent, not too small.

The best way to get government more focused and effective in its crucial responsibilities like protecting public health and safety is to quit sending it into the areas that are not its responsibility.

"hoping that confronting the 'facts' and the logic will find its way back to the emotions."How is that working for us?

Lousy, agreed, though we are winning roughly half the elections with no leader or clear message.

I know you are right about emotions and I fully support that effort, but I don't know how to change emotions first.

Continuously and consistently confronting false 'facts' and failed logic is still necessary; liberals are not entitled to their own set of 'facts': Reagan made the economy worse. Energy production is unregulated. This will only affect the top two percent. Ted Cruz shut down the government. We ended the war in Iraq. Poor people are poor because rich people are rich. Republicans want dirtier water and dirtier air. Democrats care more about the poor. Young people will do better under Obama. The housing crash was caused by the failure of the free market. Healthcare was a free market before Obamacare. Minimum wage raises incomes. Not building the pipeline (or investments in crony solar) will help us move away from oil. Compassion is measured in dollars spent. A 3% increase is a slash in a program. Al Qaida is on the run. Etc. etc. Most of these get left un-rebutted most of the time. You can keep your health plan. Except for the hard left, people's emotions begin to shift when they find out they are being lied to.

Maybe this will help-- I'm not saying we change emotions, I AM saying we show them that our heart is good and that we share the same values (e.g. "clean planet good, dirty water bad, cute fuzzy animals good, landscape littered with plastic bags bad, etc") and that therefore the facts and logic that we bring can be trusted because they are in service of the same values.

During the uproar over his reforms to Wisconsin's labor laws, Republican Gov. Scott Walker got used to shrugging off bad polls. He was jarred out of his complacency one day though when a woman asked him, “Scott, why are you doing this?”

That was because the woman was his wife, Tonette. He had assumed she understood what he was doing, only to learn that she was skeptical, too.

“If my own wife didn’t see why we needed to change collective bargaining, how could I expect the voters of Wisconsin to see it?” he recalled. He then redoubled his efforts to explain his reforms.

The anecdote comes from Walker's recently-published account of his epic 2011 legislative showdown and subsequent recall election, Unintimidated: A Governor's Story and a Nation's Challenge. It isn't the definitive account -- that would be last year's More Than They Bargained For: Scott Walker: Unions, and the Fight for Wisconsin, by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporters Jason Stein and Patrick Marley -- but it is a candid, inside look at Walker's trials.

He draws a lot of lessons from the experience, and not always ones other conservatives will automatically agree with. He is simultaneously a bold, swing-for-the-fences guy and a pragmatic leader mindful that he governs a swing state.

Walker makes clear that he believes public-sector unionism is incompatible with good, effective government. He argues it is inherently corrupt because the unions' political clout makes elected officials indebted to them.

His initial plan was to simply end it in the Badger State altogether. But Republican statehouse leaders nixed this, cautioning that many would see it as an attack on the workers themselves.

“The changes actually improved our bill because they put the unions’ fate in the hands of their own members,” Walker wrote. Many union members apparently appreciated this. Walker won 25 percent of their vote in the 2012 recall.

He warns that “austerity is not the answer.” Simply cutting government is not enough and will actually drive people away in hard times. Walker consistently made the case that his reforms would free up money to prevent government worker layoffs or drastic cuts in services. For example, they enabled Wisconsin schools to competitively bid for health insurance rather than using a union-affiliated company, saving millions.

Picking your battles wisely is another theme. Walker’s reforms were audacious but doable. Republicans had majorities in both statehouse chambers at the time. Even after 14 Democrats fled the state to deprive the GOP of a quorum, all that was needed was a little tweaking to push the bill through.

Turning the other cheek is also advocated. The governor was subjected to a torrent of abuse in 2011-12, but never responded in kind. This enabled him to claim the moral high ground. When he won the recall, he was tempted to use the protester’s chant, “This is what democracy looks like,” in his victory speech — but didn’t. He didn’t want to rub their noses in it.

And finally, Walker was, by his own admission, simply lucky. The state only allowed recall elections after the targeted official had been in office for a year, which gave him time to argue his reforms were working. He would have lost otherwise, he writes. A bitter split between the Democrats and the unions over who would challenge him also helped.

Conservative principles don’t automatically equate to electoral success. To win, he argues, Republicans must present themselves as forward-thinking reformers addressing real problems — and beholden only to the people: “When you set the pace of reform, voters will see you as someone who is constantly trying to make things better. And your opponents will be forced to respond to your agenda rather than setting one for you.”

President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday wasn’t what I wanted to hear. This is what the president should have said:

“I cannot imagine what I was thinking when I pushed Obamacare. I now see it is folly to entrust government, which cannot balance its books and routinely loses track of billions of dollars, with even greater power over health care.

“If something as simple as a website is too much for government to get right, imagine what government will do to complicated medical pricing and insurance plans.

“Foolishly, my plan destroyed many sensible insurance plans — some offering catastrophic-only coverage for a lower price — exactly the insurance so many people need.

“I see my fellow Democrat, Rep. Jim Moran of Virginia, seated nearby. I take to heart his comments, which he can safely make now that he’s retiring from Congress, about how Obamacare is economically doomed, with few young people signing up but sick old people taking money out. The math doesn’t add up.

“Now that I think about it, it would be better to end government involvement in health care altogether and let people shop around for the best free-market plans, including catastrophe-only plans, depending on individual needs. Let’s try that. In fact, let’s see if I can revise other items in my agenda so they work better for consumers …

“Minimum wage laws, for example. Although a higher minimum is popular with people from both parties, minimums make no sense. The law cannot make an employee who a company values at $5 an hour become worth $10. Minimum wage laws just increase unemployment by eliminating some jobs. They don’t do the poor any favors. Let’s repeal them.

“And let’s get the feds out of the preschool business! Government does a bad job with K-12 education. Why would we think our central planning should expand? My education department funded studies of Head Start, and we were all astounded to learn that they have no effect. It’s insane to do more of something that our own research shows does not work. Education should be left to local governments and parents.

“Immigration: It’s odd that I’m seen as a friend to immigrants, given that I’ve deported more of them than the previous president did. But if we don’t want people breaking immigration laws, the best thing to do is simplify the law. Conservatives worry that people will come here to mooch off the welfare state or commit crimes. So how about letting people in with quick and simple procedures focused on checking for crime and terrorism, but saying no immigrant is eligible for welfare? That compromise makes sense.

“National Security Agency surveillance: After all the outrage over the Patriot Act, you must have been surprised, America, to discover that the NSA does even more snooping under my presidency. I will not abandon the basic governmental duty to keep citizens safe, but we should limit snooping to people whom we have probable cause to suspect might be terrorists.

“Climate: I think the greenhouse effect is real, but the evidence that humanity’s contribution to it will cause dire problems is debatable. Better to reduce Environmental Protection Agency micromanagement and let America get as rich as possible. This will help us cope with environmental side effects and afford the research necessary to find better sources of energy. Global warming is a theoretical problem. We have real problems, like reducing our debt and getting clean water to the world’s poor.(more at link)

Some fair points made here, but some blind spots too IMHO. One of the reasons Romney was a bad candidate was he was tone deaf on this issue e.g. when Newt started talking about an elderly Grandma who had been here for decades, Romney hardcore savaged him. (FL debate IIRC). Different people speak different languages. Around here we speak logic, but far more folks speak emotion. An effective leader, e.g. Reagan, does both at the same time.

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Speaker John Boehner is at it again, holding his finger in the air to see which way the media's wind is breaking on amnesty. Boehner has announced his plans to bring up immigration reform at a GOP retreat, with an eye towards legalizing the status of millions of illegal aliens presently in the United States. The familiar tropes are all there: we have to do better with Latinos, we have to do make inroads with minorities, we have to have a bigger tent, we got hammered by Hispanics in 2012 and so on and so forth.

Here's what establishment Republicans don't understand: Hispanics didn't hammer Republicans in 2012. They hammered Mitt Romney, because Mitt Romney stunk as a candidate. In 2008, Republicans nominated John McCain to be their presidential candidate, and McCain supported amnesty. McCain did worse among Hispanics than George W. Bush, who pursued tougher immigration enforcement.

It's the candidate, stupid, and when a party nominates a candidate that requires you to hold your nose before you can vote for him, that candidate is going to perform badly among all demographics. How do we know this? Because McCain lost a presidential election to an opponent who hadn't even served a full term in the Senate. Romney lost an election to Obama after Obama lost over seven million voters from 2008 to 2012, with record unemployment and deep dissatisfaction over the economy.The answer for the Republican Party is to nominate candidates who don't stink, and to nominate candidates who don't open their mouths to switch feet with remarks about legitimate rape. The answer is for the Republican Party establishment to take a long hard look at itself and realize that it's the problem, instead of blaming policies that include enforcing the law.

We're keeping the heat on the GOP establishment, with our efforts in South Carolina to hold Lindsey Graham's feet to the fire. We're sending a message to the Democrats, going after seven of their vulnerable seats with an eye towards picking up Senator Mark Warner's seat in Virginia as well. We intend to put candidates in place who understand that enforcement is what the American people and Hispanic Americans both want.

It's time to make it clear to the GOP establishment that the Hispanic community's problem is the same problem the Republican base had: awful candidates who don't inspire or connect with voters. That's why the establishment loses elections.

Your donation is helping us turn the tide, and ensure that the fight against crony capitalism, big government, and the GOP's own self-destructive tendencies is successful. John Boehner is too stupid to see it, but we'll send him a message even he won't get confused in 2014. Amnesty for illegals is not what Americans want. It's not even what Hispanics want. Good candidates who we believe actually give a damn about our concerns are what we want.